Don Constantine de Braganza was now viceroy of India, and Camões, desirous to return to Goa, resigned his charge. In a ship freighted by himself he set sail, but was shipwrecked in the gulf near the month of the river Mecon, in Cochin-China. All he had acquired was lost in the waves: his poems, which he held in one hand, while he saved himself with the other, were all he found himself possessed of when he stood friendless on the unknown shore.